Day 30: Lucky Pierrot (again) and Speech Presentations

Breakfast:

A cute kyaraben my host mom made for my host brother:

Clover:

Onigiri #22:

We did our speech presentations today. Everyone did such a great job! B組 (B-gumi = B class) and A組 did our speeches together. JD and I were the MC and Timekeeper, respectively, for the first half, and then three people from A組 were did that part for the second half. We would basically introduce the next speaker, keep track of/make sure they knew the time, then comment on their speech, thank the speaker, ask if there were questions, and end the Q+A when time was up.

My speech on Japanese Cute Culture:

I got nervous and messed up a few times, but speaking was my biggest weakness at the beginning of this program and I think that I've been improving a lot. I see a LOT more room for improvement and glaring mistakes, but overall I think that this would have been a challenge even in English, and that I'm happy with how my speech went and proud of my improvement over the past few weeks. This would have been impossible for me to do a month ago.

Also, for some reason after practicing for a while I started saying "かわいい物の文法" (cute-thing grammar) instead of "かわいい物の文化" (cute-thing culture) and I have no idea why. I think I only messed that up once near the beginning though because I was really watching for it. I've also always had some trouble with accidentally saying "kowai" (scary) instead of "kawaii" (cute) and had hoped that this speech would help with that, but it kind of just made the speech slightly more difficult than it had to be.

(Also, the Pikachu on the board says "Today is the speech. Let's do our best! (i.e. Good luck!)"

Afterwards, I went to Lucky Pierrot with Kieren and Colton to celebrate! I think this is the Chinese chicken burger:

I had another one of those soda drinks and found out that they're actually energy drinks. They're tasty, but I'm probably not going to have another one. Energy drinks/high amounts of caffeine and me don't always mix super well. I just get way too bouncy and talkative.

After that, we went exploring for a bit in the warehouse district and found a shop with this big bear and big Totoro:

For some reason Totoro had catfish whiskers.

I think this is a six-leaf clover, but it was sort of hard to tell. One of the leaves had this cool defect where it started off normal, had a bare section, then became a sealed cone. I have no idea how this happened but it was neat.

Also, a tiny puffy five-leaf clover and a big puffy four-leaf clover:

I got some snacks at the 7-11 today while I was waiting for my host parents. This one was called wheat chocolate and I thought they were going to be chocolate covered wheat kernels, but they turned out to be kind of like chocolate covered rice krispies (but made of wheat instead of rice). They were really good, but kind of an awkward size and hard to get from the bag to my mouth without having to think about it.

These one was corn chocolate and, again, I thought it was going to be chocolate covered corn kernels, but they turned out to be more like giant chocolate covered Corn Nuts. I liked the wheat chocolate better than these ones, but these were still good and didn't have the awkward size thing going on.

Behind city hall I found more clovers. I think I found nineteen clovers total, and somewhere around five of them were five leaf clovers:

Dinner:

Day 27: Shopping and Mt. Hakodate

Breakfast:

Last week my friend from class, Tegan, and I found out that we live really close together, so today we met up to go shopping at Daiso. I live about a 15 minute walk from a Daiso which is next to the supermarket my host family sometimes goes to, and Tegan lives across the street from it.
Walking over to Daiso:

Unfortunately, we met up at around 9:00 and found out when we got there that the Daiso opens at 10:00, so we walked around for a bit. We ended up stopping at a 7-11 because it was one of the only things open at the time. We also passed this tiny corn field which I thought was neat:

About half an hour later, we ended up at a supermarket and looked around for a little bit. (Note: I usually say "grocery store," but the Japanese word for grocery store/supermarket is スーパー（suu-paa） which comes from the word "supermarket" so all of the スーパー's here are "supermarket" in my head.
We couldn't tell if this was seaweed or eggs. I think it's seaweed:

Squid and other seafood:

After that, we went to a ユニクロ（Uniqlo） which is a clothing store which I've heard described as "a higher-quality Japanese GAP." I wanted to get a shirt or two because I packed fewer shirts than I needed so I could get some in Japan (both because I wanted some shirts from Japan and because I wasn't sure exactly what the weather would be like), but ended up getting a skirt that was on sale instead because I suck at shopping for shirts/clothing in general but particularly shirts. Tegan also got a skirt.

Next, we went Book Off which is kind of like a Half-Priced Books. I really appreciate that pretty much all of the books are the same few sizes and because of this sit on perfectly sized shelves in perfectly even rows. A few of the shelves were 100 yen shelves so each book was only about a dollar. It was so great! I could have spent a lot longer in there, and really want to go back to a Book Off at some point. I ended up getting two books from the 100 yen shelves, and one other book that was a little more than that. I picked out stand-alone manga/graphic novels (so not part of a series) that seemed targeted at a younger audience (so simpler vocabulary/plot lines, and sometimes even furigana which is tiny hiragana next to difficult kanji that gives the phonetic reading):

They also had various other things like collector models and board games all for really good prices. Here are some of the figurines:

This is a carbonated hasukappu drink I got at the grocery store/supermarket. It was pretty good, and a lot more flavorful than the hasukappu fizzy water-thing I got from the vending machine after Kendo. I'm still not sure how to describe what it tastes like though. It's just kind of berry-ish.

Then we went back to the 7-11. I like the little sitting area they had in the corner. A lot of the 7-11s here have sitting areas, and all of them have wifi. I think the sitting areas are because they sell so much meal-like food and there aren't really a lot of places to sit and eat in Japan. There are very few benches, and almost no garbage cans. If people buy food, the generally eat it where they bought it, or take it to work/home/school/wherever they're going and eat it there. It is also taboo to walk while eating, or eat while standing in a random spot because it's considered dirty:

After that, we went to Daiso and looked around for a bit, then went home.

I got a bunch of different flavored of Pocky at the grocery store:

This cute drink form 7-11:

I couldn't tell if you were supposed to put fruit in it or if it tasted like fruit or what from the label, but it was sweet and fizzy.
I also got these cute pastel "Colorful Ramune" candies at 7-11:

I got more of those rose things at the grocery store (this one came with a sample of peach-rose which tastes like the same thing but kind of peachy), and some candies which I hope don't just taste like vegetable juice:

As well as this interesting candy:

Here is the skirt I got:

And the three books:

The first one is called "Shiba-san Lifestyle" and is about three shiba inus (Note: inu = 犬 = the word for dog in Japanese). The two brown ones live together and the bigger one freaks out when their owner brings home a little black puppy because she remembers how much less attention she got when her owner brought home the littler brown one, but then warms up to the black one and it goes on from there:

The second one is one is called "Mushroom People's Marriage" and is about little fairy people. I didn't notice until later that their skirts/tops aren't actually clothing, they're part of their bodies and just kind of fade into their skin. I'm not sure what it's about, but sometimes they fight spiders. Also, I think they might have a little Steven Universe-type thing going on where all of the mushroom people appear female (whether they actually all are or not, I'm not sure).

This last one is called "Little Kimi and Big Me" and it is about Kimi and Masamune who have a really big height difference. After flipping through the book I wasn't sure whether they had a thing going on or not and figured that that was going to be part of the plot, but found out by reading the first page that they are a young married couple which kind of answered that question. It seems like a light-hearted, humorous book about their lives, and it plays up the height difference a lot. Kimi seems high-energy, and a little spontaneous, and Masamune (who is telling the story) seems pretty mellow and is kind of just tagging along for the ride.

At Daiso (which is basically a Japanese dollar store) I got this container for my clovers because they were starting to make a mess:

These のり（nori = seaweed） punches for my kyaraben IS:

And this amazing thing which I'm looking forward to testing when I get back home:

You drop it in when you are boiling eggs and it changes color to tell you how cooked the eggs probably are.

I also got some tomato hard candies (which are fantastic and taste like really good tomato soup but sweeter):

For lunch we went to a fast food restaurant:

I thought this was water because of the brown glass but it was tea which surprised me a lot when I drank some:

Lunch:

After lunch we were planning on hiking up 函館山（Hakodate-yama = Mt. Hakodate）, but we were all kind of tired and decided to just drive up instead:

The weather was a little cloudy, but the view was still pretty gorgeous. Lots of view pictures:

That little green island is where the Yabusame was, and you can see HIF in the lower right (behind the two-part cream building behind the building with the flat greenish roof):

I hadn't realized until seeing this view how narrow the middle strip of the city is. I had always thought that the 市役所（shiyakusho = city hall） was nearer to the ocean on the left, but it's actually closer to the ocean on the other side. It's the large, square, reddish building sort of in the middle of the strip. I also hadn't realized how big the building was until seeing it from up here. It is 8 stories tall, but really wide.

Zoomed in picture of HIF:

The viewing area/building is actually kind of creepy looking, and I think it is also a broadcasting tower:

My host mom and me:

I ended up getting a few souvenirs at the gift shop to bring home, but I got them duty free so I'm not supposed to open them until leaving the country. I also got a phone charm and a Hakodate pin from a capsule machine.

When we got back home I tried one of the sweets from Onuma. It was sweet, but kind of jelly-like and weird. I found out a few weeks later that you're supposed to freeze them and that they're kind of like otter-pops.

Also, the candies that look like chalk were sugary, milky, and a little minty. They were a little bit like after dinner mints, but not as creamy.

Dinner at my host father's parents' house: